National Green Week

National Green Week is an annual campaign started by the Green Education Foundation. Every year the GEF is committed to delivering sustainability education to students, educators, and groups around the world. They encourage all sorts of initiatives, ranging from waste reduction to water sustainability projects.

While the programs started by the GEF are generally targeted more towards school-aged children, we can all do our part. What do you do on a daily basis to cut back on waste? To preserve water? To manage your carbon footprint?

Here at Dr. Willard’s we asked ourselves these same questions, and we’re proud to say we’re actually making a difference.

Farmers and gardeners have been using our PlantCatalyst® product around the world for over 40 years. We often promote its ability to significantly increase yield, make plants healthier and more disease resistant, improve germination rates, promote better absorption, etc., but perhaps the most important benefit of them all, at least from an environmentally friendly perspective, is its ability to decrease fertilizer usage. Studies show time and time again that PlantCatalyst® allows for farmers to cut their fertilizer by at least half, all while suffering no negative side effects.

This alone can have such a huge impact on the environment. The overuse of chemical fertilizers is responsible for the depletion of the quality of soil in many countries across the globe, including the US where environmental guidelines are strict. Soil fertility begins to drop, creating sickly soils that are essentially unusable for agricultural purposes. Fertilizers can even find their way into water supplies, contaminating human drinking water and aquatic life habitats. This process is known as eutrophication, and it’s when an ecosystem is invaded by an overabundance of chemical nutrients, effectively killing microbial life.

By decreasing our dependency on these fertilizers, we come one step closer to reclaiming what has been lost by hundreds of years of irresponsible agricultural practices. Completely reversing these effects won’t be easy, or immediate for that matter, but it’s our responsibility to ensure future generations have access to a sustainable planet.